Shoegaze in a New Decade: Deep Cut release star-studded remix album ‘Versions’

Genre-hopping, name-dropping London band Deep Cut have returned as remix giants with their third album Versions. The self-released LP is an album of rehashed hits from the bedrock of alternative music. A triumph of cohesive reworks, Versions is a 40-minute vinyl mini-album featuring Tim Burgess (The Charlatans), Spotlight Kid, The Electric Mainline, Exit Calm, Daniel Land & The Modern Painters and The Megaphonic Thrift.

Deep Cut’s big-name catalogue is not limited to their remixes, with singer and guitarist Mat Flint having played in early Britpop band Revolver, as well as bass guitar in Death in Vegas alongside fellow Deep Cut member Ian Button who played guitar (now Deep Cut’s drummer). Between them, the pair have also worked with the likes of Liam Gallagher, Bobby Gillespie, Iggy Pop, and Dot Allison, and with Versions have given nods to Suicide, King Tubby and Bo Diddley.

Joining Flint and Button in Deep Cut is Emma Bailey (vocals), Simon Flint (bass) and Pad Bailey (guitars). Between 2011 and 2013, the London-based outfit produced a series of remixes, the best of which appear on Versions, which is essentially a who’s-who modern remix medley of psychedelia, shoegaze and krautrock influence.

The bass-and-synth-heavy, wordless atmospherics and exhaled vocals of The Spotlight Kid’s Budge Up opens Versions up to The Electric Mainline’s Don’t You Know, whose darker, static energy has been levitated to a spiralling, tinkering ode to vocal-varying which continues into the next track.

Coaxing down the mammoth energy of Exit Calm’s The Rapture, Deep Cut have morphed this belter into into a sleek, subtly progressive seven-minute experience. Following the gentle exhaled vocals of Emma Bailey, Nicky Smith’s strained, powerful vocals have been relegated to a brief appearance at the track’s end, as a dreamy afterthought of this trancey appropriation of a modern psych-rock classic.

The up-tempo urgency and splintered, faraway of vocals on The Megaphonic Thrift’s Tune Your Mind is followed by the track’s polar opposite: Versions’ most vocally-led number. Deep Cut’s remix of Tim Burgess’ White thrives on repetition and gradual progression, with its minimalistic but expected spiralling effects not taking anything away from the track’s melodic gravity, harmonies and the understated horns that see the track to a natural finish.
Closing the album is a decidedly tribal, static rendition of Daniel Land & The Modern Painters’ once gentle and unassuming Eyes Wide Shut. Stretched out another two and a half minutes, the comparatively grating hammering of this rehash almost seem to laugh at the original lightness of the track. Buried beneath the heavy layers, Land can just be heard singing, “Is it too late to close my eyes?” A perfectly appropriate question, for this closing track is perhaps the boldest remix of them all, and distances itself from the dreamlike trance memories Versions also provides.

Released on July 8, 2014, with a limited number of 50 white label vinyl presses, Versions is available for purchase at:

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